Meet Tania Willard: The artist behind Commercial–Broadway’s public artwork

Tania Willard. Photo: Kyla Bailey

For those of you accessing the new platform at Commercial–Broadway, a stunning new piece of public art awaits!

Produced by Tania Willard, of Secwépemc and settler heritage, Rule of the Trees is a work that acts as a reminder of the Indigenous lands beneath our feet.

Tania works within the shifting ideas around the contemporary and traditional. She often works with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Besides, Rule of the Trees, Willard has also worked on If the Drumming Stops, with artist Peter Morin, on the lands of the Papaschase First Nation in Edmonton, AB. Willard’s ongoing collaborative project BUSH gallery, is a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledges and relational art practices. Willard is an Assistant Professor at UBCO (Kelowna, BC).

We chatted with Tania about the role of art on public transit.

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Now showing: award-winning public artwork at Joyce–Collingwood station!

Have you checked out this amazing artwork at Joyce–Collingwood SkyTrain station yet?

We have some news to share!

For those of you who board/alight the Expo Line at Joyce–Collingwood SkyTrain station, a new piece of public art has probably drawn your attention.

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Q&A: Spotlight on Emily Carr student Autumn Quigley

As a transit user in Vancouver, Autumn loves the cultural diversity of the city

When illustrator Autumn Quigley first moved to Vancouver, the diversity of the city really appealed to her. So, when the time came to design a transit etiquette illustration for TransLink, she went back to this cultural aspect of her new home.

Autumn is a recent graduate who majored in illustration from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD), whose artwork depicting transit etiquette is currently displayed on our transit system.

TransLink’s recent collaboration with ECUAD aims to take a look at transit etiquette through the eyes of students who are also transit users themselves.

More than 40 students of the fourth-year illustration course at ECUAD, taught by Professors Justin Novak, Amory Abbott, and Daniel Drennan ElAwar, brought their own sense of creativity to the project.

Autumn chatted with our social media team about how art in public places serves a purpose.

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Capturing Art on Public Transit – 2017 Capture Photography Festival

We recently had the pleasure of catching up with British Mexican photographer Alinka EcheverrÍa, a featured artist in the 2017 Capture Photography Festival.

The Capture Photography Festival is an annual not-for-profit festival that strives to nurture emerging talent, engage community and spark public dialogue about photography as an art form and a vessel for communication.

This year, Capture has once again partnered with TransLink, this time on an art installation on the SkyTrain system.

This series titled Nicephora, is installed at Stadium–Chinatown Skytrain Station and can be viewed until 2018.

Precession of the Feminine (2015), which is part of the larger series of works entitled Nicephora, was born during EcheverrÍa’s BMW Residency program at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in France, a museum named after Nicéphore Niépce, the inventor of photography.

The Capture Photography Festival runs from April 1 – 28, 2017.

For more information, head to capturephotofest.com
Be sociable! Check out Capture’s Facebook and Instagram.

Stadium–Chinatown Station hosts Capture Photography Festival exhibit

You may have noticed some work at the third track at Stadium–Chinatown Station the past few days and now, you’ll see a lovely new art installation in this space!

What is art? Are we art? Is art, art? – Lisa Turtle

What’s going on?

TransLink is teaming up with the Capture Photography Festival running from April 1 to 28 and installing a public art piece on our SkyTrain system.

Public art is a key element to creating a welcoming environment, encourages community connections and encourages gathering places which help reduce crime and vandalism.

This temporary installation is called Precession of the Feminine by Alinka Echeverría and will be available for all to enjoy at Stadium–Chinatown for the next year.

A little more about the art

ALINKA ECHEVERRÍA, PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE, 2015

With her combined training in photography and social anthropology, Alinka Echeverría weaves critical questions of visual representation through her work. Precession of the Feminine (2015), which is part of a larger series of works entitled Nicephora, was created while she was completing the BMW Residency at the French Musée Nicéphore Niépce, named after the inventor of photography.

Inspired by Nicéphore’s biography, and the histories of ceramics and photography, Echeverría fuses blown-up images of women from the museum’s archive with ceramic vases in three-dimensional digital simulations.

Using the form of the vase as a metaphor for our understanding of the feminine, the artist invites us to see that which is invisible with our bare eyes – the underlying photographic and printing techniques behind the image itself.  The medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan 1972) and in this series the vase is the vessel through which to reflect on this fragile construction of the female image.

In this way, the works subtly reveal how economic and cultural power are linked to photography as an artistic and documentary medium, and have been carried forward through largely invisible codes and techniques, thus becoming normalized and entering our collective unconsciousness.

A precession is a change in an object’s orientation or rotation around an axis. In this work, Echeverría aims to present the precession of representations of femininity. Echeverría quietly questions the perception of photography as a marker of truth, while examining more broadly the way that codes and symbols of femininity are constructed and understood.

Keep your eyes peeled today for the installed exhibit at Stadium–Chinatown Station!

Author: Adrienne Coling